Researchers in Sweden have shared incredible photos of the ancient canine after finding it in the Siberian permafrost in summer last year.

After studying it, they aren’t sure whether the ‘amazingly well-preserved’ creature (with a full set of teeth) is a dog or wolf – possibly because it comes from the point where dogs were domesticated.

Love Dalén, 44, and his colleague Dave Stanton, 34, believe it could be the earliest confirmed dog. If true, it could be invaluable in teaching us about when wolves were domesticated.

The researchers’ Russian colleagues have called the male creature ‘Dogor’ – a pun on ‘dog or wolf’. While it’s thousands of years old, and has an exposed rib cage, Dalén said it feels like a ‘very recently dead animal’.

Read more: unilad